Erika D. Smith: 91-year-old patriarch has seen it all in Northwestside neighborhood of Golden Hill

May 4, 2013

Frank Randall

Written by

On one warm, sunny morning last week, I got a chance to sit on a screened-in porch and chat with Frank Randall — or as most people call him, Mr. Randall.

It’s a sign of respect.

You see, Mr. Randall is 91 years old. He’ll be 92 in October. When someone is more than 90 years old, you don’t call him by his first name. Or at least, I don’t.

Mr. Randall, hard of hearing, legally blind, but mentally spry, has lived in the same house on the same block on the Northwestside of Indianapolis since 1954. He and his late wife, Nanye, raised nine kids in that four-bedroom house. Two of those kids, Marshall and Terri, moved into their own houses on the same block. His granddaughter lives in a house across the street.

“I moved over here because I wanted a bigger house for my family. My family was growing up ... and I saw this house,” Mr. Randall said. “I don’t think there’s anyplace that I would rather go.”

Most neighborhoods have someone like Mr. Randall. That one resident who has lived in the same house for more years than anyone can remember, and can tell you everything about everyone who has lived in the neighborhood for the past 20 years. That one resident who can tell you why there’s an empty lot on the corner and how many times the city plows the street every winter.

I’ve always found such people infinitely interesting. Collectively, they make up the history and institutional knowledge of a city through its neighborhoods.

In Mr. Randall’s case, though, there’s an added twist.

His family was among the first blacks to move into the neighborhood of modest brick and wood-frame homes along West 36th Street between what is today I-65 and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street.

Mr. Randall’s house is about a block-and-a-half from the entrance to the Golden Hill Historic District. This storied subdivision of sprawling, architecturally striking homes sits just south of Woodstock Country Club.

“They called it Golden Hill,” Mr. Randall said of his neighborhood, “although we’re not living inside of Golden Hill.”

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Over the years, the subdivision has maintained its affluence and whiteness, while the smaller houses on the streets that surround it have not. What was once a mostly white, middle-class neighborhood is now mostly black and working class.

“When I go to work at like 5 in the morning, you can see the prostitutes walking up and down the street,” said Mr. Randall’s daughter, Terri, who is 53 and works as a bus monitor for Indianapolis Public Schools.

The Randalls’ stretch of West 36th Street is quiet most of the time, Terri and her father say, but in recent years, they’ve noticed an uptick in crime along nearby streets. It’s not unusual to see drug addicts walking around. And one block over, a house that caught fire back in November is still standing, a charred eyesore that’s impossible to ignore.

And yet, this neighborhood sits side by side with upscale Golden Hill, only a stone gate and a sign warning “Entrance Area Patrolled” between them.

As a kid, Terri said she and her brothers used to ride their bikes outside the Golden Hill subdivision all the time. Mr. Randall, though, was often inside the neighborhood.

After spending years working as a security guard for what was then Indiana National Bank, he started a catering company. His main clients were the well-to-do white residents of Golden Hill who loved to throw parties.

“I did landscaping for families over there first, and then word got out. ‘Frank is a wonderful cook’ and all that,” he said. “And so everybody started calling, and people would say, ‘Make sure you bring some of your rolls.’ ”

“Your rolls?” I asked, keenly aware that I hadn’t eaten breakfast.

“Yeah, my rolls. They loved my rolls,” he said. “They kept me busy.”

Mr. Randall can talk about a world inside the stone gate of Golden Hill that most who live in the small houses just a few feet away have not seen and probably will never see. So, in a way, his story is the neighborhood’s story — one of a weird crossroads of wealth, poverty, race and class.

And Mr. Randall was the bridge — at least until he retired.

These days, he’s just happy to spend time on the porch, talking with his daughter, greeting visitors and waving to the many people who know him on his block.

“This is one of my favorite spots here on the porch,” Mr. Randall said while leaning back in his chair. “I’m out here from April until the last of October, and then I go inside for the winter.”

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